I was reading Nikki Finke’s deadlinehollywooddaily.com the other day (I needed a break from writing the Top Companies profiles; sue me) and saw an item about the six summer flicks that reached blockbuster status before July 4th.

(Relax: I’m not about to compare Pfizer and Disney, a la my Pfizer/Yankees editorials of years past. While both of those companies recently appointed CEOs in response to static share prices, Disney’s key intellectual property is (unconstitutionally) protected in near-perpetuity, while Pfizer faces key patent expirations almost every year.)

I’m not the first to conflate movies and pharmaceuticals (it’s been done in a variety of ways, some not so licit), but the list made me think about the parallels between the industries, especially their reliance on blockbusters, follow-ups, and huge marketing efforts.

Sure, Hollywood has a lower threshold for blockbuster status ($100 million vs. $1 billion), but that’s probably because there’s no single-payer system in place. If we had employer-sponsored comprehensive movie insurance or government coverage, I’m pretty sure we’d be facing $150 movie tickets (with a $10 co-pay). Pharmaceuticals have generics and counterfeits, movies have bootlegs; both sides worry about getting ripped off via the internet.

So that brings me to those six blockbusters: Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Spider-Man 3, Fantastic Four 2, Shrek the Third, Ocean’s Thirteen . . . and Knocked Up.

In a clear instance of “one of these things is not like the others,” Ms. Finke included graphics from each movie’s promotional materials: alongside dramatic photos of Johnny Depp, the Silver Surfer, Spider-Man Noir, George Clooney, et al., she posted a headshot of Knocked Up‘s bemused and disheveled Seth Rogen.

In another week or so, I’m sure the list will be expanded to include a Die Hard sequel and Transformers, a movie based on a two-decades-old franchise of children’s toy robots. (Note: Paramount gained Transformers when it acquired DreamWorks in an effort to boost its late-stage pipeline.)

But for the moment, our sample set includes five sequels and one original film. Perhaps it’s just a one-year anomaly, but I find it remarkable that virtually all the major movie successes this summer were what can charitably be called “me-too” products.

And you wondered when this was going to loop back into pharma-territory! As I read through my associate editor Kristin Brooks’ pipeline data for the Top Companies reports I thought about the variety of sequels that were “coming soon,” as well as the big-budget blockbusters that pharma companies promise.

There are no guarantees, of course. Sometimes, those big marketing budgets don’t pay off: Evan Almighty didn’t exactly set the world on fire, and one of this issue’s profiled companies is believed to have spent more money marketing a drug than the product managed to bring in last year, which must be causing some sleepless nights. But it’s the sequels — or the follow-ups within a class — that keep the wheels turning.

This brings me back to the success of Knocked Up, a movie that flew under the radar but achieved huge success by word of mouth. It didn’t post revenues anywhere near those of its five blockbuster compatriots, but it held its own in a competitive marketplace despite the lack of a significant marketing campaign. (It’s also the only one of those six movies that my wife and I saw.) In an era in which movie budgets can roll past a quarter of a billion dollars, it’s refreshing to see that a film made for a “paltry” $30 million can be a success.

I like to believe that it’s a lesson for its industry, but movie studios are locked in a model where it makes more financial sense to swing for the home run, and the performance of a movie like Knocked Up is just a pleasant surprise.

It appears that many of our Top Companies have the same outlook, except without the glitz and glamour. So is there a place for “art-house blockbusters” among the Top Companies?

Or maybe Pfizer will need to repackage Exubera to resemble a toy robot from the 1980s. . . .

Gil Roth has been the editor of Contract Pharma since its inception in 1999.